PNG police chief facing contempt proceedings

Transcript

Contempt proceedings have been filed in a Papua New Guinea court against the police commissioner Gary Baki.

It's the latest in an increasingly convoluted chain of legal events around efforts by the police fraud squad to probe a major fraud case implicating the prime minister Peter O'Neill.

Johnny Blades reports.

The police commissioner suspended the director of the fraud Squad Matthew Damaru, and several colleagues two weeks ago.

Mr Damaru had recently directed the arrests of the Attorney-General, the prime minister's lawyer, as well as a Supreme court judge alleged to have taken a bribe while deliberating on the validity of an arrest warrant for Peter O'Neill.

The local court issued a stay order on Mr Damaru's suspension, prompting Mr Baki to close the fraud office and lock Mr Damaru out.

He has also launched an inquiry into the fraud squad's activities, claiming its officers have breached police procedure on numerous counts, and are being funded from outside the force.

However, a Supreme Court ruling last month to allow the fraud squad's investigations into the major fraud case to resume paved the way for the high-profile arrests.

McRonald Nale of Jema Lawyers, who is representing Matthew Damaru, indicated that contempt proceedings had been filed against Mr Baki and that there would be more coming.

A government MP, Bire Kimisopa, says the commissioner's attempts to veto investigations into high-profile fraud cases is a worrying trend.

Mr Kimisopa, who is a former police minister, says the long-standing independence of PNG's police force is under threat.

BIRE KIMISOPA: That's the defining mechanism that ensures that police are effectively doing their job. Now if you have a police commissioner all of a sudden usurping the authority of the line agencies within the police force, then 
we will have a difficult time trying to enforce the law.

Mr Kimisopa has dismissed as unfounded claims by Gari Baki that the fraud office has been out of control, erratic and that its leaders kept him "out of the loop".

The MP says that the fraud squad must be allowed to do its work, and similarly, the government must respect the independence of the police.

BIRE KIMISOPA: Now it's incumbent on everyone in our country - as far as the law is concerned - if there are certain implications of impropriety or criminal conduct, it's incumbent on us - especially leaders also - to hand ourselves in to the police.

But the Police Minister Robert Atiyafa has expressed full confidence in the police commissioner and the inquiry that Mr Baki has set up.

ROBERT ATIYAFA: And that's the bottom line. The minute we allow this to happen where you have a department like Fraud Squad being influenced by other than the office of commissioner, in terms of investigations or in terms of what they are legally bound to do, then that's not on. Then all those investigations, on slow cases or high-profile issues, need to be done so in consultation with the office of the commissioner of police.

But there's a growing chorus of concern that the police commissioner is protecting the prime minister, and that the integrity of the force is sustaining great damage in the process.

The opposition leader Don Polye says Gary Baki's actions are destructive to not only the police force's future but the whole rule of law and governance in general in PNG.

DON POLYE: The inquiry that is undertaken by the police commissioner is legally wrong, morally wrong and ethically wrong. There's no credibility in it, there's no integrity. There's no faith in what the police commissioner is doing. The investigation being done is only to protect his own position, and to protect what we in Papua New Guinea see as corrupt and wrong in nature.

Last year, the previous police commissioner Geoffrey Vaki, was sentenced to three years' jail for obstructing fraud squad members from enforcing an arrest warrant against the prime minister.

Shortly before his conviction, the O'Neill-led government appointed Gary Baki as police commissioner, the third change of police chief in four years.